On the HahaFiction shelf
Listen for the Lie
Lucy Chase left Plumpton, Texas, with a murder accusation she couldn’t disprove. Five years after her best friend Savvy died, a true-crime podcaster starts asking questions, and Lucy comes home to a town that has already decided she did it. The gap in her memory leaves her with the same question.
From the publisher’s blurb
“Am I a murderer? You tell me . . .”Read the full description at Penguin publisher description
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What makes it funny?
Waiting to be fired, Lucy plans a chicken dinner to soften her boyfriend’s discovery that she is a murder suspect. Her problems arrive with the inconveniences of an ordinary bad workday. Readers in book groups single out her funny, flawed personality and her grandmother as particular pleasures, alongside the mystery’s twists.
The comedy at work
Lucy uses dry, sometimes vicious observations to manage other people’s fear of her. Even a boss’s spotless office makes her think about his potential as a killer. The podcast transcripts let us hear the accusations against her, while her own chapters supply the private retorts.
Try this if…
For readers who want a murder mystery with a prickly narrator and room for dark jokes. The chapters alternate with podcast transcripts, so the public investigation sits alongside Lucy’s account of herself.
Good to know
Reader-reported content notes include domestic violence and traumatic brain injury. Some readers found the story slow or predictable and didn’t finish it. Others especially praised the audiobook performance for making the podcast sections sound convincing.
A few distinguishing details
- A murder suspect who cannot remember the crucial night
- Podcast transcripts alongside Lucy’s private account
More funny crime & thriller
Sources & further reading
- Listen for the Lie, Penguin Books UK page, ISBN 9781804993781
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